Lessons the Hard Way

For this blog, our assignment is to conduct a learner analysis on ourselves. I decided that since I had posted on our class message board that the learner analysis I was most interested in was the Dick, Carey, and Carey method, I would turn the focus back on myself to practice analyzing using their method.

Instead of focusing on entry behaviors for a specific class, I decided to first look at my history as a student. I remember always being very focused as a younger student. I never considered leaving an assignment incomplete or a concept unlearned. I enjoyed reading in my spare time, and I was already showing signs of enjoying creative writing myself. When I was in the third grade, I wrote a play about a space monster that some friends of mine and I acted out in class. When I was in the sixth grade, I wrote a story that my teacher got published as a book in our local library. I loved games and puzzles, especially when I was introduced to logic problems by one of my middle school teachers. When I moved to the middle school level, I had missed some kind of test that would have placed me in the advanced math class, and so I was placed in the middle level math track, which was completely frustrating to me. As I moved into high school, I felt less challenged by the classwork, and so my work progress began to become half-hearted, and I started to develop procrastination tendencies. When I became a junior, however, I found a class that finally challenged me. My junior and senior English teacher, Mrs. Claire, was one of the most demanding teachers that I had ever met, and she expected nothing but the best from me. She really helped me hone my verbal and logical skills, as she would have essay tests over literature units that would literally last weeks at a time. This may sound grueling, but every single one of her students loved it. Not only did I decide to choose Language Arts education as my major, but I couldn't have been better prepared for any writing assignments I would ever be faced with in the future. I did enjoy my other subjects to a point in school, but I found it harder and harder to put an effort into them. It might have been that most of them were not nearly as challenging as my English classes, but I think I tended to have a personal preference that played a part in it as well. In college, I had a hard time with self-motivation, and my procrastination became more pronounced. I continued to work hard on my English classes, and in addition I began to work in Theater more, which was something I had only done in an extra-curricular fashion in high school. As for grade performance, I mostly earned A's and B's, with the occasional C thrown in for good measure. It wasn't until I got into my first Master's Degree program that I turned around my study habits, mostly because I didn't have any choice. A Master's in English required me to read a book a week practically for each class, so there was little time in my life that wasn't devoted to homework. I started to organize my time and life a lot more efficiently, and this has thankfully carried over into my teaching career and work on my second Master's Degree.

As for attitudes toward content, I would say that I'm someone that finds some interesting angle in all of the learning I do. It also helps that I'm only taking classes in my major now that I'm in grad school, but I also think that there are many learning experiences outside of something I pay for that I have learned to enjoy, simply because I'm adding to my knowledge of the world. I have a great attitude toward most content. As for my attitude toward delivery systems, I'd say I have the easiest time with discussions or group activities. Maybe it's the teacher or old Theater major in me, but I just can't stand lectures, or anything that's one-sided. An example of the type of delivery method that I hate happens pretty much during most teacher inservices I go to these days. We're there to learn a new concept (or more likely there to rehash an old one), and we have to sit there all day taking notes while someone talks to us. I like learning, but only if it's collaborative. I also really enjoy anything technology related, as I've always been a complete tech nerd. Even though I love this aspect of learning, it hasn't really been directly involved in my education really until now, since most of my previous majors and classes either avoided technology as much as they could, or they were before much technology (other than overhead projectors) had been integrated into classes.

As for academic motivation, I would say that it's quite high for me now. Not only am I getting a degree in education, which is something I've always been interested in, but it's also technology-related for the most part, which makes my excitement for the classes increase two-fold. Although the work can seem a little complex at times, it's always challenging and I never seem to want for motivation. Any time you take away the challenge for me in my history as a learner, my motivation and work ethic always seems to slacken in turn.

My general learning preferences would have to be verbal, especially when it involves two-way communication or group discussion. Nothing helps me flesh out concepts like discussing them with others. Additionally, I would say that I'm a creative learner, as I like brainstorming interesting ways to present my learning or ideas (mostly verbally, as I'm not very artistic). I would also say I've fallen into the more logical type of style as I've gotten older, as I tend to be cautious and think ideas through or problem-solve as much as I can. I also think my logic tended to become more pronounced once I started working more on organizing my time to become a more efficient student.

Other than a few bad experiences with some bad educators, I tend to have a very healthy attitude toward educational organizations. Every educational institution has its bad administrator, but I really feel trusting of most people in charge of my learning, and they've very rarely let me down. I think it would be difficult to be an educator myself if I was short on trust for the organizations involved. I try to promote that trust in my own students, even though doing that in my current job is difficult, as nearly all of my students have the exact opposite attitude I do, sometimes with good reason. However, what's great about teaching is that this challenge is a learning experience once again for me, as I learn to appreciate how great my own education was for me, and I am able to use my own experiences as a learner to build back up a good trust with my own students.

As I mentioned previously, I enjoy working collaboratively when it comes to learning. It's very difficult to find someone that I don't get along with, if only as a fellow learner. I have learned great skills in my education and experience that help me with working in a variety of groups with a great variety of people. I feel as though I'm very balanced as well when working in a group, as I'm a strong enough worker that I make sure that I have something to contribute to the group as well, but I'm not so strong that I don't appreciate what I can learn from other group members. Since I've been training to become the lead tech person in our school, I've really felt that I've become even more motivated in successful group work, as there's something even more interesting to be involved in when it comes to education.

I think the main points of a learning analysis on myself is that I enjoy group learning experiences, preferably involving technology. I enjoy challenges, and my work will actually worsen if a challenge is not provided. I can find a way to become motivated for many types of learning experiences, as I have a general interest in all types of new learning. I think I would be a good candidate for the types of environments that our educational systems are evolving towards, which is good, as I plan on being a lifelong learner, and I'd hate to get behind on the times by not evolving myself.

Why Design Instruction?

In thinking about the question in the title above, I really began by thinking, as I usually do, about the negative image teachers usually get in their profession. Recent headlines and news segments today are no different than they have been: Schools are failing students, teachers are overpaid and not held accountable for enough in their profession, and even the age-old argument that "those who can't teach," or that, really, anyone could do what instructors do.

So, what I believe is the strongest answer to this question is that if teachers are going to argue against this wave of negativity, they have to first and formost remain professionals in their careers as educators. Primarily, this consists of planning instruction with the careful and systematic approach with which they've hopefully been trained to use. Many people could step into the job of training for a day and teach a lesson or two, but it is only a professionally trained teacher who can assess the needs of students in a correct manner, design instruction to meet that need, and then evaluate those designs to ensure that needs are met. This is a process that can take years to get used to, and it can take a lifetime to master. If critics continue to have isssues, then this system by nature at least creates records (if the designer or designers are professionals) which can show the world how just as much planning, study, and professionalism goes into designing instruction as it does to, say, construct a building or conduct scientific research.

It is the correlation between instructional design and scientific research that is also important in underlining another reason for having a design for instruction. There are really two reasons why scientists use systems, especially the scientific metthod, in their studies and experiments. The first is so that, in publishing their findings, anyone can see proof of the work put into their efforts, and the results obtained. This is similar to the argument for instructional design that I outlined above. The second reason scientists use a uniform system in their work is so that other scientists can duplicate the work done, either to test it themselves for effectiveness, or to improve and build upon the original work to create something improved. This same argument also works concerning the need for designing instruction. If instructors use uniform systems in their design, then other instructors could duplicate this instruction on their own to test or improve the design. These systems work to create an efficient and effective scientific community, and they can do the same for the community of instructional designers.

When thinking about communities of instructional designers, in fact, it's still hard to imagine just how much innovations in technology and communication have changed the world of instructional design, not to mention the individuals responsible for it and their relationships with their peers. If a wide variety of professions are becoming more and more networked as time progresses, including instructional design, then its easy to see how design will become dependent less on individuals, and more dependent on teams of designers, both because it makes their efforts more efficient, but also because it is becoming more and more difficult for individuals to remain effective designers with the explosion of information and educational media varieties out there. If the evolution of instructional design is moving from individual to group work, then it is an obvious point that using a system approach will be a necessity in effective instructional design.